Donald Trump is touting some peculiar state surveys to claim he's looking 'very good' in the polls

Donald Trump during a round table with the Republican Leadership Initiative at Trump Tower in the Manhattan on Thursday. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri Donald Trump once bragged about polls constantly — during the Republican primaries, when he was winning.

Lately the Republican presidential nominee has been relatively silent on the matter, as many recent surveys have shown him to be trailing Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, both nationally and in key swing states. In the absence of positive poll numbers, Trump has taken to suggesting that the election might be "rigged" against him.

On Thursday he touted the results of polls in states that have traditionally voted for Republican presidential candidates, a curious move for the party's nominee at this stage of the general-election race.

"Poll numbers are starting to look very good," Trump tweeted. "Leading in Florida @CNN Arizona and big jump in Utah. All numbers rising, national way up. Wow!"

Arizona is considered a swing state in the 2016 election. But the state had voted for the Republican candidate by wide margins in each of the four previous presidential elections.

And only one recent Florida poll, from Florida Atlantic University, has shown Trump leading in that state. The survey found him up by 2 percentage points, with a margin of error of 2.7 percentage points. All other recent polls from that state have found Clinton leading, some by several points.

Utah is a different story. The heavily Republican-leaning state looks set to hand Trump a blowout win (he was up by 20 points in the latest poll there), but he remains highly unpopular with Utah voters. Only 31% of them said they viewed Trump favorably, but Clinton was even worse off with a 23% favorability rating there.

National polls have been even more troubling for Trump.

While his poll numbers have improved in the past couple of weeks, he still has a long way to go to close the gap with Clinton:

RealClearPolitics

And a new national poll from Quinnipiac University out Thursday showed Clinton leading Trump by 10 points.